The Los Angeles River has been channelized into a storm drain, used as a toxic dump and finally become the darling of environmentalists who would once again see steelhead trout leaping from it.

And last week the river, and those who advocate for it, saw its biggest change of course in decades as the Army Corps of Engineers agreed to back a $1 billion plan to restore it.

The L.A. River has been in the news so much and so positively in the last couple of years, as kayakers have won the right to run its rapids and the community has begun to take it back, that it’s well to remember just how recently the stream was an unloved, unmitigated disaster, and how well-fought has been the battle to save it.

Top credit goes to the nonprofit Friends of the Los Angeles River and its poet co-founder and president, Lewis MacAdams. For over 20 years, from back when this quest truly seemed quixotic, FoLAR has been tilting tirelessly at this windmill, and now it has slain the actual dragon.

Mayor Eric Garcetti made going after the full funding that local activists have asked for, rather than the $453 million plan the Corps initially backed, a major priority of his administration. He never merely paid lip service to the goal of a full restoration of the river as a natural resource and winding, riparian park; he hammered on the issue for years, always showing up for it as a councilman and going to Washington, D.C., to continue and eventually win the fight as mayor.

The ambitious plan to fully restore and enhance 11 key miles of the river from north of downtown up to Elysian Park doesn’t have congressional funding yet. But the fact that the Corps reversed course and now backs the plan the city and activists have pushed all along will mean a lot to its eventual success in getting the money to do it.

In a city and a region that is woefully underparked, this is a major environmental and human victory. It is true that the stream that goes from the foothills above the San Fernando Valley over 50 miles and through 14 cities to its current mouth in Long Beach is not the Mississippi. We are a drier region than that; we have the rivers that suit us. But the L.A. River is also by no means only seasonal, or rushing and wild only in winter flood. As pirate kayakers proved when they stealth-paddled its entire length, forcing the Corps to acknowledge it as a navigable waterway, even in summer the river flows. It is especially deep — well over 10 feet in pools — in the green and lush area just north of Dodger Stadium that will be a key part of the terraced riverside park the new plans envision.

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One drawback activists in Frogtown and Glassell Park worry about is the inevitable gentrification pressures that neighborhoods about to get a lot more attractive feel. Garcetti is right to say he’ll try to balance affordable housing with plans to increase river access so it doesn’t turn into “a playground for the rich.” There are trade-offs in every human endeavor. Now it’s time to celebrate a major Southern California success.